The 9 Most Secretly Sci-Fi Movies

By Jordan Hoffman

August 9, 2012 / 3:00 PM

Regarding August science fiction movies about mental enhancements: there was never just one!

"The Bourne Legacy" may look, sound and smell like an action-adventure movie – that's certainly how they're selling it – but at its center is a genuine sci-fi premise. The baddies (the shadowy agency represented by Edward Norton's scowls) are making super soldiers by introducing viruses into field agents via green and blue pills. "Chems," they are called, but hardcore nerds might be forgiven if they flash on Ketracel-white, the drug that the Dominion uses to give its elite band of warriors, the Jem'Hadar, the edge (as well as keeping them in line.)

"The Bourne Legacy" isn't the first movie to obscure sci-fi-ness in its marketing. We offer up this readymade document for you to bring up whenever you feel like being a pain in the ass at cocktail parties.

'Limitless'

This is top of mind (mind!) because, like "The Bourne Legacy" it involves pills giving someone the smarts. To look at the TV ads, however, you'd be forgiven if you thought this were a character drama about the business world. Basically, "The Pursuit of Happyness" with a hidden agenda of psychotropic pharmaceuticals.

'Never Let Me Go'

Young, earnest love. Young, earnest BRITISH love! Such a chick flick, right? Wrong! It's about cloning and organ harvesting. "Never Let Me Go" isn't meant to express the sentiments of two hearts longing to be one – it's about one heart longing to stay in its native rib cage!

'Dark City'

It was obvious from the trailers that something was odd and ominous about this film, but it was far more than just its slick, neo-Noir look. Yep, trade in those fedoras for space helmets because (spoiler?) that titular city is actually a ship hurtling through the inky blackness of an interplanetary abyss!

'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

Beneath the evocative music and brooding "gimme-an-Oscar" faces in the trailer, there beats the heart of a screwy sci-fi premise that has tickled some of the dorkier minds in popular culture. Examples? Well, the "aging backward" thing didn't just inspire Philip K. Dick (see novel "The Counter-Clock World") but also the producers of the dweebiest show ever, Star Trek's Animated Adventures (see episode "The Counter-Clock Incident").

'Modern Times'

Today's audiences might look back on this Charlie Chaplin silent film and just think it's an opportunity to laugh at a dude fall down. (Note: Chaplin falling down is, still, one of the more sublime things put to film – it's nothing to scoff at.) However, when the movie was made in 1936, all those gadgets that seem basic today were actually extremely far-fetched. Go call your great-grandparents and see if they remember what it was like to Skype back then. We'll be waiting.

'Indiana Jones and the Island of the Crystal Skull'

Huh? Indiana Jones? Mr. Action-Adventure himself? Yeah, the plots would always get a little supernatural at the end, but sci-fi? Oh, I guess those skulls were from aliens, the pyramids were spaceships and there was a theremin on the soundtrack when Cate Blanchett tried to read Indy's mind. Oof, I think we're all better off trying to forget this one.

'Seconds'

John Frankenheimer's film starring Rock Hudson from 1966 may have lured in the audiences as a psychological drama about a mid-life crisis, but this tale of the extreme plastic surgery underworld is hallucinatory and weird and loaded with enough paranoia to be a genuine sci-fi mindscrambler. Plus, cosmetic surgery isn't even this advanced today! Just ask [insert publicly shamed starlet from AwfulPlasticSurgery.com here].

'The Wizard of Oz'

What? You mean all my fabulous friends from the drama club are actually into sci-fi? The friends of Dorothy might also be the friends of Doctor Who? Think about it: portals to other worlds, a robot, color-coded navigation systems, plus water kills the baddie – just like in H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds!"